On the Irrelevance of Genre Poetry [Live]

At the fun "Raw Dog Screaming Press Book Party" at the Morgantown Poets group in West Virginia last month, I opened my reading by sharing a piece I'd written for Locus Magazine, a poem about why I write poetry, which I contributed to their running Roundtable series on speculative poetry.  Here's my recitation of "On the Irrelevance of Genre Poetry," recorded during the reading. I don't often write things like this -- an opinion essay told in the form of a poem -- but the audience really seemed to laugh and also get charged up by the poem. Press the…

Making Readers Squirm: Sensory Immersion Podcast

Last June, I went on a Summer Teaching Tour at various writer's workshops, and one of the highlights was my return as guest lecturer to the Odyssey, The Fantasy Workshop, run by Jeanne Cavelos annually at St Anselm College, in New Hampshire. My guest lecture topic at Odyssey was "Making the Reader Squirm: Sensory Immersion," which they have just released as a podcast on the Odyssey Podcast page (it is also available through iTunes). In this lecture, I discuss ways that science fiction/fantasy and horror writers appeal to the reader's "sensorium" to generate a visceral effect. The class analyzed examples…

Halloween Episode of Horrors at Crimewav.com

There's a bonus treat wiggling around in the filthy bottom of your Halloween candy sack....some hot brass! Crimewav.com -- an excellent podcast of noir crime fiction -- is featuring three of my music-enhanced horror stories in a special Halloween Episode of Horrors in a surprise Halloween release tonight.  It's a great way to get a free sampler from my cd,  Audiovile, and you can also hear the new track, "Attack of the Bleu Man Group," if you didn't check it out on gorelets.com earlier this week.  Check it out, and sample some of the other writers on the site, or…

microcosms of horrors

Throughout this Halloween month, microcosms twitterzine is posting horror poetry of 140 characters or less via twitter. I'll have about five of them in the mix, with the first one -- "Sick Taxidermist" -- posted just today. Check 'em out, and follow microcosms (and me too!) if you're on twitter. The internet radio show, Snark Infested Waters, is posting a new horror-related podcast every day in October, too. They interviewed me about -- and will be playing a selection of tracks from -- my Audiovile CD in a few days. The interview was funny...it's now available for your listening pleasure.

The Roundtable of Terror

You can now listen to the *complete* roundtable conversation between Lawrence C. Connolly, Lucy A. Snyder, Gary A. Braunbeck and myself, recorded in late September 2008, called "The Business/Life of Writing Horror and Dark Fantasy". It's one of the best panels on the genre I've ever been a part of, in professional studio-quality audio. The discussion goes into very deep, and sometimes very funny, territory, really showing the complexity of the genre and where horror fiction is headed. Hosted by Doug Dangler at the Ohio State U Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, you can download it from…